Dubs have no issue with ref McQuillan

Jim Gavin said there is no beef between Dublin and Joe McQuillan as the All-Ireland champions reacquaint themselves with the referee for the first time since last September.

After beating Mayo in the final, Gavin claimed: “Not only were we playing Mayo but we were playing the referee as well.”

The Cavan official hasn’t taken charge of any of Dublin’s previous 13 league and Championship games this year but will be the man in the middle on Sunday.

“That 2013 season is in the past,” insisted Gavin. “It’s gone, it’s behind us. We’ve no issue with the referees. We can’t control referees, all we can do is manage how we play the game. We don’t talk back, the players don’t talk back to referees.

“I think our disciplinary record demonstrates how that has tightened up in the squad. We try to play open, honest, attractive football and try to be the best we can be. The 2013 season is locked down, it’s in the past, and we’re just looking forward to Sunday.”

In last year’s post-final press conference, Gavin went as far as claiming his team had found it particularly difficult to win frees last year. He also said: “It’s a fight that we have in every game, that opposition players are getting more frees than we are, and we work very hard on the art of defending and the technical tackle.”

Asked yesterday if he felt Dublin were getting a fairer shake of it this year, he responded: “I think Pat McEnaney has done an excellent job as chairman of the referees committee. I know the referees themselves probably scrutinise their own performance as much as we would the players, and I think we’re seeing the benefits of that. I think the standard of refereeing has been very high this year.”

Gavin accepts Donegal will set themselves to be difficult to beat, but also points to their attacking attributes. “I acknowledge that Donegal have a very strong defensive system, and are very difficult to break down. In attack, they’re very competent. They manage the ball very well, great patterns of movement and get players into the scoring positions.

“And they have a very high shot-scoring ratio from taking the right options at the right time. They can mix it up with some long balls into the square. They have some big players there. How they set themselves up... we can’t dictate that. Most of our work over the past two weeks has been on how we’re going to play our game.”

How they do that will depend slightly on what’s put in front of them, but Gavin likes to put a lot of trust in his players to work a way around it.

“We have a standard sort of template that we use but that is modified, depending on the opposition that we play. The great thing about these Dublin players is they have a high level of game intelligence, quite disciplined and can move in and out of different strategies that we want them to play, and that’s been an impressive part of working with them.

“The players read it themselves, they are a very intelligent group of players and they see patterns of defensive play develop against them. They will talk about it on the field of play and do what is required to break a team down. It was a very robust Monaghan defence the last day they encountered and will be even more robust on Sunday.”

Last year’s centre-back Ger Brennan is again out of consideration after damaging his ankle. The St Vincent’s man hasn’t played a Championship game this season. Gavin said: “He had a little bit of a setback last week. It won’t be too long before he’s back in training. Just irritated his ankle again unfortunately. He was back kicking football with us, he was back playing. It has been on ice for the last couple of days.”